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Topic: Traffic Monitoring (Read 451 times)

Any of you clever Foccers know what the rubber strips across the road are actually for? The ones that are ties to the road then feed into a little box that's usually chained to a lamppostI asked the council worker who was installing them and his answer was 'traffic monitoring' apparently to count the amount of cars then travel on a certain route but my argument for that is why do they have them set up every 100 or so yards and why is there 2 strips side by side? That to me says speed detection? Other wise they would only need 1 strip?

A pair of detector ropes can tell them the number of axles crossing, their direction of travel and their speed. They can also determine the wheelbase of the vehicle so have a good idea how many vehicles passing are motorcycles.As for the purpose of a succession of them, it might be to log the buildup of traffic jams or to count how many people head off to use “rat-runs” through residential ares or to find out where people tend to speed.

The two strips are used to try to establish the direction of travel. They are close together to get a single vehicle each time.

Additional sets down the road (normally the other side of a junction) determine how many vehicles go each way from a junction.

The sets are used to work out how much traffic goes through a route to work out what they need to do for repairs etc. They don't calculate speed (or at least the older ones didn't) or connect to anything outside the box. It is purely a vehicle counter.

Speaking as a Parish councillor, we have had these on our estate recently.They are used to count the amount of traffic, directions, timings and speed in a percentile i.e. 28% were in excess of 34mph etc.You can't get "done" by them, they are there too help with road infrastructure/planning decisions at a county level.

A pair of detector ropes can tell them the number of axles crossing, their direction of travel and their speed. They can also determine the wheelbase of the vehicle so have a good idea how many vehicles passing are motorcycles.As for the purpose of a succession of them, it might be to log the buildup of traffic jams or to count how many people head off to use “rat-runs” through residential ares or to find out where people tend to speed.

[quote]They are used to count the amount of traffic, directions, timings and speed in a percentile i.e. 28% were in excess of 34mph etc.You can't get "done" by them, they are there too help with road infrastructure/planning decisions at a county level.

Exactly the response I got when asking the gadgee fitting some near my house a couple of years ago

A single strip would not allow the monitor to work out the direction of travel. Having two they know that something went from left to right, or right to left. This is to work out traffic volumesThey theoretically could calculate the speed by timing the gap between hitting the first strip and the second. However, they cannot actually calculate speed as the strips run the whole width of the road so could be being hit by vehicles travelling in the other lane at the same time.

The strips are close enough together to ensure that one vehicle axle will hit the second strip before a second axle (or vehicle) hits the first one.

Its all a rough science to establish the number of axles travelling in each direction so they can work out what needs to be done for traffic calming, roadwork's etc etc.